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Comment by eBombzor | Hacker News Reader

I do feel this trend in my life. I have a job which I'm grateful for but nothing feels satisfying anymore, and I feel like it is much harder to connect to people or form deep relationships, especially in this field, unless you already have a clique in your workplace.

On top of that, AI is generally a demotivating entity to the majority of people. Despite all the hype of Altman and whonots, I feel like people just don't have a positive view of the future of their careers due to AI. And once you lose hope it's just downhill from there.

Also I feel like society still hasn't recovered fully from COVID, so many third places gone, restraunts closed, etc. It's getting there but people are isolating more and more. I'm in my late 20s and I just haven't felt like my social life is even half of what it used to be before COVID.

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I sense your lack of hope and see it in a lot of younger people these days.

I grew up in the 80's. College in the late 90's. Start of career in the mid aughts. Went through two dot com busts, and have seen a lot of shit. The one thing that my generation (Gen X) seemed to have was always some optimism for the future. Some hope that as bad as it is now? It will eventually get better. The economy will recover, tech jobs will come back, new companies will start up, things will get back to normal.

There seemed to be so much open road with our generation. We knew we were at the forefront of something really special. The road to being successful was pretty standard. Go to college, get a degree, start a career making 40-50K. Get married, buy a house, have kids, live happily ever after.

That seems to have dissipated with Millennials and has gotten worse with Gen Z. Even college for Gen Z is like, "I don't know, is it really worth it any more?" How do you pick a career in something that may or may not exist in a few years because of AI? It just seems like we were the last generation that really had so much hope (regardless of which party was in the White House or controlled congress) and it seems that kind on relentless optimism for the future has dimmed immensely over the past few years.

I'm grateful for the time I grew up in. I'm not sure I would be able to handle the amount of pressure and stress that young people have to deal with these days.

Huh. I'm a successful person in my mid 40s, just a year or two behind you. Objectively things are going great.

However, my perspective has gotten a lot worse the last couple of years. Enshittification, corporate consolidation, tech market, AI, etc. I didn't once worry during the dot com bust, or the financial crisis, or the outsourcing boom.

It feels VERY different this time.

Basically it feels like tech was the last place where you could do well and outrun the long term real wage stagnation the country's faced since the 70s. And it's not anymore.

It's really early to see if the current layoff wave is just a lean time like the dotcom burst or 2008, or if it's really they end of tech as a low unemployment, high paying profession.

Yes AI can change the situation durably, but it's not the first time developers get a new tool that gets them more productive. We've seen that with compilers, IDE, frameworks, etc.

I remember New Year's Eve in 2000. It felt like people really believed in a better future and they looked forward to experience the new millenium.

In retrospective this looks like a depressing joke to me.

> "The one thing that my generation (Gen X) seemed to have was always some optimism for the future."

The vibe among Gen X was that the west was going to get invaded / nuked by the Soviets or economically crushed by the Japanese.

Until the dot com boom, we all thought we were going to be lucky to manage a store at the mall.

I think if modern LLMs were invented in the mid 2010s it would have been promoted in more positive ways, but because everyone is afraid for their economic security saying scary things gets more of a response. I think it's kind of gross that it's a race to scare ordinary people and especially Dario Amodei should feel kind of ashamed of himself.

Children would change that, instantly.

I wasn't a father until late in life and then all of a sudden, everything is easy.

The moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep, every moment has meaning and purpose. Nothing, no meal, no evening, no dollar is wasted.

As my children grow - the only question is how long do I have until I have grandchildren. After that - how long until I no longer have skin in the game?

I do full time AI stuff and it is meaningless other than the provision it provides.

I would not recommend avoiding the biological imperative. Reproduce. Everything else after that moment is clarity.

What a testimony to the tricks your brain chemistry plays on you.

> I would not recommend avoiding the biological imperative. Reproduce. Everything else after that moment is clarity.

I'd like to point out that experience is far from universal. Parenting beyond "feed and shelter them" is a minefield of ambiguity and conflicting evidence.

I'm not even on step 0 for that. Dating is f*ked for ordinary young men in 2026

> I do feel this trend in my life. I have a job which I'm grateful for but nothing feels satisfying anymore, and I feel like it is much harder to connect to people or form deep relationships, especially in this field, unless you already have a clique in your workplace.

do you have kids? Family? That is the ancient receipt for a great and happy life.

Yeah, it was, but now we have AI and there is no future for our kids, so it's even worse.

> Yeah, it was, but now we have AI and there is no future for our kids, so it's even worse.

what? We went through so many bad periods in our history..is it sarcasm?

No sarcasm, your reply is insulting. But stupidity, blindness and greed-driven techno-optimism displayed on this site got to a vomit-inducing level recently.

agreed.

I'm wondering how on earth are people supposed to provide for a family these days?

the techno optimism has been absolutely insane. celebrating that people won't have jobs anymore, that robots will be doing everything and that how the human species is just a stepping stone or something and if you resist you're a "specist" (famously said by Larry Page)

Don't swing to the extremes, world is a bit bigger than news portals and US ones are beyond toxic regardless of the party favored. Nature is still beautiful, traveling is as enlightening as ever, meeting new cultures, foods, learning real history of the world as you visit places is priceless. Raising kids is hard but extremely rewarding. And so on.

Times are not easy, but they are not doomish. Or, every decade there were doomish periods where you could have the same view. every. single. one. How would you feel in late 30s when big part of the world was visibly inching to global war? This is nothing and nobody knows where this current moment will lead us to.

It's not about news but the reality around me, and I'm not in US but in a country that has an active war on the other side of the eastern border. And it's a war with increasing participation of drones and robots.

And at work? Yeah, the clock is ticking, and in this transitory period people seem to be happily ginving up on thinking and their agency. Execs are getting more and more sociopathic. Young people more and more disenganged. The planet is getting worse and worse.

At this point I really regret that I brought my kids to life, because I'm pretty sure it will be mostly suffering that they will experience.

That is extremely bleak. The story of the human race is a series of good and bad cycles. Right now we are in a bad cycle. It will end. Maybe in 10 years, maybe in 20 years, maybe in 80. But it will. And we need your children & others to carry the torch of our species into the future. Humanity still has many thousands of years of life in us yet.

    Rustin Cohle:
    Think of the hubris it must take to yank a soul out of non existence into 
  this... meat, to force a life into this... thresher. That"s... so my daughter, she
  spared me the sin of being a father.

Yeah. I had kids, but the fact that I can't see a future for them, but have to live as if I do, is crushing.

If you're already happy you should think carefully about having kids though. I was extremely, extremely satisfied with my life before children. My kid is wonderful and healthy but as an introvert I didn't realize just how crushing it is to never get an extended period alone to recharge.

You can still get time alone to recharge - maybe not as much as you like, but at least some. The price is, you also have to take the kid solo sometimes, to give your spouse a chance to get alone and recharge. They need it too, even if they aren't as much of an introvert as you are. They may not needs as much, but they probably need some.

> If you're already happy you should think carefully about having kids though.

Well then you get your 60s and your focus changes. Kids become adults. Family is the true legacy. We didnt come so far as society searching for netflix and chill.

> I didn't realize just how crushing it is to never get an extended period alone to recharge.

You cannot just relax, because guess what, some human beings depends on you. But yeah, some phases are harder than others.. but thats life.

I think it's a bit presumptuous to think I was just relaxing. I was doing stuff like fighting in a foreign civil war and commercial fishing in the Bering Sea. I wasn't really 'relaxing' so much as doing things that are impossible to do without being alone from family. I'm probably an odd ball but those are the sorts of things that 'recharge' me.

It's not you, it's just the know-it-all guys with proven recipes for happy life are presumptuous.

Off the cuff I do think it's pretty good advice if someone is unfulfilled or really spending a bunch of time just relaxing. Almost everyone I know with nothing much going on that had kids are happier for it. If you are wasting your life fucking about, kids will force you to do something with your life, and raising kids is an honorable use of time.

If you already have a fulfilling and happy life without children though you are throwing a wrench into a good thing with a dice roll of how it's going to turn out. Turns out, I'm not the kind of person that finds raising children fulfilling. If my life was already unfulfilling, then that wouldn't have made much difference and at least added a distraction.

There's no one to blame but me for that, but I'm here to pass on the experience.

Of course what's interesting is that while you do have the obligation to provide for and take care of your kids, you don't have the obligation to enjoy it or find it fulfilling. But people get offended if you don't, which I've never understood, as there is nothing dishonorable about it.

1) okay, I'm fascinated by the 'fighting in a foreign civil war' thing, can you expound on that?

2) this may sound weird, but I do think that if you want to be a good parent (and please note, I don't actually have kids yet, so ignore this advice if it doesn't ring true) is finding ways to get your 'alone' time despite family responsibilities. I'm also an introvert, but my 'recharge' time is stuff like meditation and solo-programming and math time, so that's pretty easy to do, just set aside a few hours a day to recharge my batteries so I can be fully present for my family the rest of the time, I can see that fighting in a foreign civil war isn't exactly the type of thing you can fit into an hour in the morning before the kids wake up, but if you have similar introverted activities that recharge you that can be more easily done alongside family life, I would argue that you'll be doing your family a disservice not to do them- they deserve you at your best, which means you should give yourself time do fully recharge yourself so you can be there for them the rest of the time.

I am on point, about 1.3% of the year, being a father, husband.

That 1.3% or about 5 days is my vacation.

I went' from ~60% free time to 1% and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

lol, what? How can you assume that people in the internet will connect this:

"If you're already happy you should think carefully about having kids though. I was extremely, extremely satisfied with my life before children. My kid is wonderful and healthy but as an introvert I didn't realize just how crushing it is to never get an extended period alone to recharge"

with

"I was doing stuff like fighting in a foreign civil war and commercial fishing in the Bering Sea." ?

Both sentences dont add up, at all.

I’m strongly introverted and having kids was an amazing positive experience for me.

> If you're already happy you should think carefully about having kids though.

I feel like it should (but doesn't) go without saying that people should think carefully about having kids no matter who they are or how satisfied, but especially so if they're unhappy.

Thank you for speaking honestly about children. I struggle with fatherhood as well and it's one my life goals to have these honest conversations. I genuinely believe the majority of people really like it, but there is a sizable minority that never speaks out.

I had a job, was relatively happy. Then I had kids, less happy due to severe lack of time. Now, have no job and still have my kids. Happiest I’ve ever been.

https://www.musixmatch.com/lyrics/The-Smiths/Heaven-Knows-I-...

  Two lovers entwined pass me by
  And Heaven knows I'm miserable now
  I was looking for a job, and then I found a job
  And Heaven knows I'm miserable now

  In my life, oh, why do I give valuable time
  To people who don't care if I live or die?

> On top of that, AI is generally a demotivating entity to the majority of people.

I agree. I think we should just stop.

I don't think the majority of people have given it a passing thought to be fair. For folks that grew up with the advent of being the "designated family googler" (and rested the success of their careers on such), it is an incredible time for information.

You're telling me there is a faceless, non-judgemental, never exhausted tutor just sitting there waiting for my curiosity to strike up a conversation? How absolutely fantastic. We're spoiled with information.

The only way out is through. This transition sucks but (1) is necessary (and INEVITABLE) to become an advanced civilization, and (2) the cat is out of the bag, it is not going back in, and burying one's head in the sand is no solution at all.

The cat can be put back into the bag. Go see the plot for “the creator” or “dune” to see what doing that looks like.

I've seen the latter but I'm not sure I get the relevancy.

It's barely mentioned in the film iirc. The book is obviously far better. He's referring to the Butlerian Jihad.

At some point you have to take some responsibility for your life.

I can't relate to any of the things you mentioned. I have deep relationships with lots of people, across entirely different types of groups. We see each other regularly (weekly, sometimes more), we do fun things together, we go to events and plan trips, we always have things to talk about, we have hobbies and communities to connect with even more people. We make new connections and friends constantly.

You probably prioritized the wrong things at some point in your life, like the values you hold or the place you choose to live in. You can still make changes to those choices.

My life and the life of everyone I know is immeasurably better since COVID. That's not meant to be a brag but I hope it serves as a wake up call that your experience is not the only one.

Both can be true—

We need to be the change we want to see.

There are significant structural issues in society that present headwinds for average people trying to build a fulfilling life.

Great, you figured it out, this society-wide collapse in happiness was caused by people simply deciding to be sad, simultaneously. No external factors were involved. Everyone just decided they didn't want to be happy anymore.

> Everyone just decided they didn't want to be happy anymore.

My id wants to be happy, but my collective unconscious wants to doomscroll.

Yes, you are absolutely right in the sense that I did not actively consider human connection to be a priority in my early years. I'm working on that now. And I as well know a lot of people who's lives got better after COVID. But I guess what I'm trying to say is that even if I wasn't that type of person, it was still easy to make friends across places, but the general trend nowadays is that there a lot more barriers to break into social circles, and a lot of social circles are not as easily accessible. And maybe it's also because I live in Seattle.

>And maybe it's also because I live in Seattle.

Oof, yeah, that definitely doesn't help.

I agree that it's tough to break into social circles not only as adults but also younger people, because everyone spends so much of their time doomscrolling on the internet filling their heads with negative emotions from things they can (and at no other point in time could) control.

Hindsight is 20/20 for some but that's why I prioritize my friends and my community and I don't make plans to move away to have a giant empty house in the middle of nowhere, and I don't make plans to take on a job that will have me drained and unavailable, etc. I recognize the massive positive influence they have on me (and I on them) and I take great steps to nurture it, no different than my family or my career or anything else of material importance to my way of life.

In any case, you need to invest time and mental and emotional energy into it, now more than ever. People yearn for community but no one wants to work for it. Be available, be present, reach out, make plans, forgive, be adaptable, be fun.

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